|
Suite
of Poems
by Victor Hernandez Cruz |
from
the books 'Portraits- Poetic Tributes.' (The Lorca poem has a Spanish
version. The poem below is not a translation but another rendition,
which will be published in the Los Angeles magazine Ventana Anierta.)
Juan Gris
'Poem
With Still Life'
A circle/
A shadow- with a square
Shade
Outside
of which light wants to get in;
Dance
in
As
if forbidden there in the rectangle
To
laugh-
Mechanical
pencil- makes itself
A
door as to liberate guitar strings
Silent
in the geometry of patterns
Wants
to levitate with duende
Figuring
a woman who is the spine
Of
the la'ud
An
arm traverses her hollow interior
of
endless resonance
Plucking
the center abbys
What's
more higher lines
Vertical
Crossing
the horizontal
Cylindrical
wrist
The
sound then gives birth
To
flowers
Marching
into the circle
Flamenco
in paint-
Without
moving it exudes:
Each
thing talks that
Each
that talks thing.
Made
up of a gathering of silence
'Harlequin
With A Guitar'
Bolero
cubes
Like
ice in brandy
Transparent
Dimensional
lament with joy
The
third dimension of desire-
The
shape of a door opens
Bluest
sky.
In
this realm
If
you didn't go to church-
Just
kneel
In
front of:
'Seated
Harlequin'
A
pantomime captured
With
spoken lines
The
joke of life
Things
just visible enough
To
bring them back
From
a dream.
Miro
He
looked through prisms
Made
of the crystal eyes
of
children
Honduran
children living
On
the almond covered coast
Vera
Cruz toddlers
Beholding
piñatas
for
the first time
East
Harlem kids
living
on 100th street
In
1957
Apartments
decked
like
Italian cakes.
| He
lit a candle to
the
Virgin Morena
Of
Cataluna
Her
dark eyes
Walking
around Aguas Buenas.
In
the algebra of Islam
Improvised
calligraphy,
octagons
and the inside
of
flowers
The
concept of birth in flight
The
blueprints for feathers-
A
caterpillar's conception
of
design
The
dreams of fish
A
spiral of cartoons,
It's
like a laughter
of
the brush
A
donkey in a vegetable garden,
Not
the image of the fruit
but
its taste-
All
opened in multiplicities,
Eyeballs
and mouths parading,
Chance
from no-where
Arrives
as nothing seen,
Disfigured
like microscopic
View
of amoebas.
The
wardrobe of a clown,
Indian
saris fitted into
the
body of Space,
Turkish
pipes embroidered,
Persian
rugs flying
above
Barcelona,
A
Guatemalan skirt
in
Paris,
Symbols
of the constellations,
Dissolving
like Neapolitan
ice
cream,
Where
butterflies
Fresh
out of a Kafka's window
Captured
in Nabokov's nest,
Sing
medieval hymnals
The
brass patterns of the frames
of
the Saints
Projecting
guidance
Through
his wrist.
His
face like
A
white peasant's moon,
The
ancient hand which
Drew
cave etchings,
The
view from the hut
In
Issa's Haiku,
Or
the flight of pigeons
from
tenement roofs-
Each
time you behold
Miro's
painting,
It's
like dreaming awake,
Each
time it is a miracle
Kobayashi
Issa
His
eyes were binoculars
small
things
Had
the fury of the cosmos.
A
winter enters a molar
a
mosquito drinks up the ocean,
Tiny
particles- a fly's leg
hits
the leaf like thunder
The
very moon a cherry
in
a beggars pocket
And
if it down pours rain
horses
all wet upon 'chrysanthemum'
Who
have no knowledge
of
fragrance emanating
From
the strokes of a brush-
her
kimono full of fruit
Five
fingers in her womb.
His
father's best crop: Issa
of
the renga chain mountains
Of
Yataro-
must
be a place
Sounds
in which gongs
I'll
compose it through
his
photos
Watch
the light in the river
plum
trees covered with snow,
A
jade Buddha in a garden
toned
in the frosty optics
of
an owl through which
a
moth crosses out of nowhere
Towards
the porcelain light
of
a cats teeth
Which
pierced through
the
morning fog.
Issa
heard insects with sour
throats.
In
case of the flies
he
always swung with pad.
Bed
bugs ran out of the sky
the
bed of the stars
Covered
by the blanket
of
the blue firmament.
He
saw facial features scatter
in
the sunrise
Noses
and eyes charge
up
trees insert themselves
In
random animation,
and
then look back
How
ridiculous everything is
scarecrows
eating rice
Dogs
asleep upon melons
The
rich try to buy
the
poetry they do not have
Snow
turns to shit
they
frame it as art.
Quiet...Issa
has reincarnated
lives
in Detroit
Passes
by Barrio
polished
Mexican house
Through
window
sees
kids hit piñata
Looks
like flower
coming
apart
With
las mañanitas
all
is flor y canto
The
horizon smiles with Issa
everything
else
Becomes
stupid.
Vigo
Martin
In
a city that now floats
in
a bottle
In a
dimension outside the census
walls
which were outside the archives,
There
was a painter
Whose
roll was to paint the pyramids
As in
Palanque
or the
chambers of the Egyptian
Pyramids
Vigo
painted the inside
hallways
of the tenements
While
throughout the air
he flew
upon a white horse
or smoked
hash-hish
out
of Moroccan tubes.
He painted
rocks as
if they
were pottery.
Loose
bricks were
found
by landlords
Containing
anthillian
pictographs.
An artisan
of the streets
whose
smooth knowledge
From
many angles
made
more lines visible
Through
the old face of the barrio.
Against
colorful bodega windows
bright
candy stores
Or deep
in the clubs of night
under
the world
In the
sub-metropolis of need,
once
we spoke of lizard instincts
Of frozen
eye sockets
containing
marbles,
In the
chance of numbers
till
dawn brought
A kind
of light blue
to the
roofs and bricks
And
the edges, became visible.
Vigo
made a collaboration
between
survival and creativity,
He stored
objects that came
in the
wind
Like
a bazaar in search
of a
dictionary of shapes
And
texture.
As evidence
that I was there
on this
planet
I still
maintain a rock
which
he painted against
The
laws of gravity-
Now
grounding the poetry
of the
tropics
Against
the East Trade Winds.
In a
conference of the stoops
He maintained
his Mayaguez
Sweet
Lips origin-
So I'll
go there and
touch
a tree,
In honor
of his Taino hands,
upon
one of which
A cherry
blossomed.
Muhyi-din
Ibn 'Arabi
Born
in Muricia-Spain not far from the sea,
salt
in the wind always good for colors,
Milage
of star sky must've
come
down to become almonds,
Frankincense
like something you could touch,
permission
of a fragrance-
Where
respiration- a mountain
is born
taller in a land of many.
Patches
of inner silver hidden,
in the
halalujah of the substratum,
Shine
from the interior of the earth.
Avicena
hovered as an Angel,
corridors
of moist sound,
Voices
in a spider web of Talking Things,
like
a pink of silence filling a dress,
The
moon divided into shoes,
Sublime
of the skies,
where
they say a turquoise ice floats,
Night
to observe when
what
blew into Breath-
Eyes
fresh from the Zodiacal Towers
as all
impossibility grew knees,
Merely
to prostrate,
such
visibility from the Bay of Cartagena,
Where
chocolate from America melted,
parrots
escaped from the cages
They
crossed the Atlantic in,
by then
Ibn Arabi was imagination,
A perception
that not all the time
the
letters find you awake-
Not
everyone will here the same
heard
a turban unroll and say,
if the
syntax confuses the novice,
I am
disguised as bone
to regain
my throne,
The
taste of nuggets
Cream
of walnut
the
study of Cafe
The
heart open itself
to the
thoughts of Venus,
Sees
from a distance,
A flower
destined for your breasts,
before
the earth became adobes,
Adam
wrapped as a quill-
through
the sundance dawn of the
Compass
antennas of the palms.
Hash-hish
in Marrakesh,
in Cairo
bellies that turned to tea,
Alexandria
of scrolls,
dreams
over Fez,
Azuleas
of verse.
In Mecca
he found a Harmonica,
a sound
sighted by the opticals
Of the
solar divine
into
the beauty of earth,
Which
he play to produce the air,
in creation
of her acietuna flesh,
Who
it was itself
to know
it.
Circulating
the black stone
orbits
the white night.
The
concord grapes below her eyebrows,
framed
like paintings in the desert museum,
Visible
from the bottom of a Jupiter crater.
Though
the earth is contaminated
Ibn'Arabi
saw a glimpse of another
world-
know now here there before his eyes.
Wind
of fire
Trapped
in flames
spaces
all the places
Fusus
al-hakam.
A gardenia
of iron.
His
origin
the
beginning of passage
1621
In Murcia
there were woman
who
would not. let me sleep
In peace-
In the
fermentation
Gyrations
I would
walk the ripples
created
by an ankle dipped
In a
lake Expanding into the 28 mansions
of the
moon
The
savanna of the skies
traveling
through perfume,
To distinguish
them all
as prayer.
At the
same time
someone
might have seen
Naked
Greek statues in motion
across
the Amazon,
Not
marble but arboreal bronze.
Today
conjure Ibn 'Arabi
to Miami
Where
dancers circular Rueda
encloses
the forms of the World.
Federico
Garcia Lorca
In
Europe there are streets of stone
where
leather has become sound-
Vanishing-audible
in
the Peninsular which exits
Into
Africa
Iberian
doors
opening-closing
Archways
Shaped
in guitars Visigoth
kitsch
colored stones.
The
same street has been
another
tongue
Which
licks another epoch,
preserves
the flavor of an accent
The
roots of our hair-
wooden
boats upon the waves
Of
our blackness, Shadows
upon
the fountains of poetic
Tiles
of flowers
In
the echoes
of
the al-Hambra
A
structure/a book of verse
each
room a young wife,
Precious
you are air
embracing
the plastic
Coconut
palms whispering
to
the crescent moon
Wrapped
in the singing
of
a rooster all crawling
Towards
the Sierra Nevada
like
a matador towards
His
love the bull, as the water streams
Down
to the house of Allah.
India
in the black flamenco
pants
dance the Sanskrit
Whistle
flute windows
of
Albaicin rum
Your
presence under the
towers
of the Mosque
Laura-
Fernando
Salsa
spins under the moon
stabbed
by a cross
As
we dance with your blood
our
pierced Guarani imagines
Naked
islands-
Lorca
in Cuba of Rhumba,
we
are all gypsies of contraband
Finally
America- an error in phonetics,
longs
for its lost China
Its
lovely India Orquidia
(transfer
from Granada to Manati-
I
saw Lorca there-holding the Sirens
hands-
her Boricua waist- her sunset
of
alphabets)
In
the childhood of his theater
Andalucia
was a stage,
he
was a page
For
the proverbs of his Nanas hands
listen
there are songs
Which
put us to sleep,
we
hear them again in Harlem
The
deep song of 125th street
its
blue desert towards
The
water of screaming curves,
crown
for the king of Granada,
Crown
for the king of Harlem,
your
womb of children,
Giving
birth in Fuentevaqueros.
Terror
and gentleness
Scream
and kiss
Fire
and roses.
A
farmer of color crops,
Borges
baptized him a painter
drawing
with his words
Lines-circles,
a nation.
An
old man stares in
a
baby's glance,
Antiquity
of old stone,
he
made cities of the occult
So
visible now
we
walk within them
We
dance within them,
and
through them the
birds
fly.
We
burn within them our flesh,
he
left plazas of desire
For
our fertile eyes,
balconies
for our drama.
The
water and the fire,
the
women and the men,
The
pants and the skirt,
and
the road that leads
To
the river illuminated.
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